‘Fire At Sea’ Wins Berlinale Golden Bear

'Fire At Sea' Wins Berlinale Golden Bear

powerful and apposite documentary “Fire at Sea,” made in the eye of the storm of the refugee crisis, has won the Golden Bear in Berlin.

It is the second major film festival where Rosi has scooped the top prize, following his Golden Lion in Venice for “Sacro Gra,” in 2013. For one documentary filmmaker to triumph in festival competitions dominated by fiction is accomplishment enough; for the same director to do so at different festivals in quick succession is extraordinary.

In an evening where every award went to a different film, Mia Hansen-Løve won the Silver Bear for best director, for “L’Avenir,” her supremely well-judged account of a middle-aged philosophy
professor, played by Isabelle Huppert, whose life is suddenly and unexpectedly turned upside down.

Danis Tanovic won the Grand Jury Prize, effectively the jury’s second prize, for his Altmanesque drama “Death in Sarajevo”.

And Filipino director Lav Diaz won the Alfred Bauer Prize for “a feature film that opens new perspectives”, for his eight-hour
epic “A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery”.

In announcing the Golden Bear, jury president Meryl Streep described “Fire At Sea” (“Fuocommare”) as “urgent, imaginative and necessary filmmaking.”

The film takes place on the Italian island of Lampadusa,
which for years has been the first target for people leaving Africa en route to the European mainland, hundreds of whom die at sea in
the attempt.

Rosi first thanked the festival for having the courage to
include a documentary alongside feature films in the line-up. “That was an
enormous victory for me already,” he told the audience in the Berlinale Palast.

He then dedicated his award to the people of Lampadusa, who “open
their hearts” to those refugees who survive their precarious journey and make
it to the island.